The happiest two days of Jeff White's life were when the parts to build his 40-ft lobster boat arrived at his house--and when they finally left as a completed craft seven months later. The independent fisherman fills traps with lobsters and gillnets with ground fish such as pollock, cod or monkfish. Now 38 years old, he began fishing as a child with his father and took to the water alone at 13, fetching lobster traps during the summer. White and his one-man crew are on the water each day from 5 am to midafternoon, as far as 15 miles from shore. "Fundamentally, it's a hunter-gatherer thing," he says. "You can't do this if you don't love it."